From idea to published page
- A topic is picked because gardeners actually search for it and because a named source exists to answer it — not the other way around.
- The source is read directly and the figures it gives are recorded with a link and the date.
- A draft is written with AI assistance. No quote, review, statistic or personal gardening story is invented in that draft.
- An automated check compares every figure in the draft against the saved source text and flags anything it cannot find.
- A person reads the page, resolves any flags, and only then sets it live.
What counts as a source
In order of trust: a university cooperative extension's own vegetable or fruit guide (written for home gardeners, reviewed by horticulture faculty), then USDA or NOAA public climate and zone data. Anything else — blogs, forums, general reference sites — is background reading only and never the basis for a planting-window figure. A guide that cannot be backed by a named source in this list does not get a number attached to it.
How the calculator earns its numbers
Each crop's weeks-before-frost or weeks-after-frost figure is copied from one named extension guide. The calculator does only the date arithmetic from there, starting at the frost date you type in — it does not estimate your frost date for you, and it is tested against known inputs, not just eyeballed.
Reading the "checked" date
The date on a guide is the last time someone compared it with the sources listed on it, not the date it was first written. It doesn't promise the page is still current the moment you're reading it — guidance and climate data do get revised.
If something's wrong
Email contact@plantbydate.com with the page and, ideally, a link to the source that has the right number. We check it against that source, fix what's confirmed, and update the checked date — usually within a week.
Where advertising stops
Display ads, clearly marked, pay for the site. They never appear inside the calculator or its results, and no seed company, nursery or garden retailer gets a say in what a page says. Any future affiliate link or sponsored placement would be labelled where it appears, per FTC endorsement guidance.